Q The Misanthrope

I like to call it a significant career change.

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  • 38 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 18th, 2023

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  • As a child, the house we grew up in had a very large tree in our back yard. I had a memory of burying some skeleton keys near it but couldn’t remember where. The house was old enough that we’d find skeleton keys occasionally and also as a kid they are special.

    I searched for days, weeks, months… Digging holes all over the yard and under the tree. I recruited neighborhood kids and friends.

    For two summers we searched for buried treasure. Never found them. Might have been a dream I had of burying the keys. I still think about it occasionally and wonder. The tree is long gone and the truth is I’ll never know for sure.



  • The year is 2034 and 96% of the population is unemployed because they are all forced to “do their own research” on literally everything and there’s no time to work. We all must research every niche topic to fully understand it before using it or the other 4% calls us stupid and lazy.

    No longer are we allowed to just buy a shower head, or bike or sign up for email without sources cited and proof we know everything about said thing.

    Have kids? Do their research too, no chocolate milk unless I’ve proven why it’s good.

    Elderly parents? Don’t let them touch that Roku remote. I need a research paper on all the options I explored.

    Sorry for all the sarcasm. I fix my house, I work, I mow the lawn and shuttle children to sports, and my friend says check this bluesky thing out, 30 seconds and I’m signed up and have a friend and a discover tab and a search that works. Life’s chaotic and I don’t want to be defined as stupid because I can’t spend hours figuring something out in place of something I think is more important.

    All this not directed at you specifically but I guess it hit a nerve.


  • You’ve stated this at least twice in this thread. People aren’t like that, just in general. Heck, I understood it and still had trouble picking a server for Lemmy and mastadon.

    Do I want a single topic or domain to define me? Will a small server have popular posts? Will it have popular people? I can’t find this popular account because I’m typing in username instead of user+domain.

    I created and deleted at least 5 before I gave up and just picked one. Is that what most people would do?

    I don’t think you’re wrong, but I think you are not putting yourself in the shoes of most users who want to follow a celebrity or a train station or space agency and can’t even find their account.



  • It says nothing about spyware, the article isn’t hyped up at all, and describes a token to track installations vs downloads.

    "This data will allow us to correlate telemetry IDs with download tokens and Google Analytics IDs. This will allow us to track which installs result from which downloads to determine the answers to questions like, “Why do we see so many installs per day, but not that many downloads per day?”

    Also there is an opt-out during installation.

    I don’t even use Firefox, and I honestly am not attacking but your comment seemed very hyperbolic and with little detail.

    You’re right that it’s good to be aware of this stuff, I also don’t see this being a road block for the average user.









  • Temu is different because they allow a seller to say I’ll make plastic dog shit toys by November 1. So it goes on sale in September and 100, 000 people order it. Now the company makes a single batch and knows exactly how many to make and what materials to buy. It’s smart. That’s why they want your friends involved because it lowers the price more to make more at once.

    I’m not defending the company but it is a smart way and less costly and wasteful than making 100, 000 dog shit toys and selling 10, throwing the other 999,990 in the local river and writing it off on taxes.




  • I use Android, so Fedilab was the app I’m using.

    I didn’t want my feed to be an endless stream of news or other languages. So first I joined a smaller server, with a topic I care about.

    Then I followed a few journalists, and followed tags I care about like cycling, my hometown, tech news relevant to me, and TV shows.

    Lastly after I had that base of content… I went looking for people. When someone posts something I like, I check their other posts… do I like those too? If he’s then I look at who they follow. Big accounts usually don’t follow a lot of others. This is endless but really gave me a consistent group of people who I care what they think and say.

    Not easy but worth the time over the course of a week or two.

    Also I watched the #followfriday tag where people lost accounts they follow and why.

    Also, look at the top accounts lists that exist. Threads accounts have millions of followers so it’s a good bet it’ll be good.


  • I agree and started putting effort into Mastodon. It took a week or two of filtering and browsing to find users and content but I’ve definitely found a more engaging base of content to interact with that is nice.

    I was an engaged redditor who switched 100% to Lemmy and I do not feel quite satisfied with the comments and content.

    I’ll stick around, but I find myself on Mastodon and using Ground News more often.

    Btw I have comments in my history of how frustrated I was about finding content on Mastodon, but suddenly it clicked after I spent a bunch of time on it. Not a raving endorsement but ultimately I do enjoy it.

    Another side note, I was looking for some top users to follow and some have 10k followers, cool. Then I find some federated threads accounts with millions and realize how small we are in comparison. I know why, and I understand it, but it’s truth that small user bases have less ideas.